Last week we looked at blacklisting so now it’s time to explain whitelists. As you’d expect, the two are opposites.

A whitelist, otherwise known as the Safe Sender list, catalogues email addresses that are approved and accepted. This ensures their delivery to the recipient’s inbox.

How can you be whitelisted?

Whitelisting can be done by the recipient themselves, using their email client. This means sometimes you will see email senders requesting their address is whitelisted, as it improves deliverability.

It is also done by ISPs. However, unlike a recipient whitelisting through their email client, ISP whitelists do not guarantee inbox delivery. Instead, an ISP whitelist shows that your email practices are responsible and that you are a trusted sender. It also means the ISP is allowed to review how recipients respond to your email – so if complaints occur it makes it easier to identify and block you as an email sender.

Peter is part of our Product Management team at Adestra. He helps to define and deliver new features to the platform, as well as maintaining our extensive documentation! That’s thirsty work, but Peter also manages to consume copious amounts of coffee to keep him going. Which is also important as his two teams, Liverpool FC and the Atlanta Falcons, can be stressful to support.